An Extraordinary Rendition
Murder will out is a favorite phrase in detective novels and it would seem that it is just as apt for the torture of victims of extraordinary renditions, rhetoric for kidnapping, as torture will out at least in this BBC article.
From grossly exaggerating Russia’s nuclear weapons capability during the cold war, completely screwing up on the collapse of the Russian government as far as predicting it, to not speaking up on the stove-piping of unanalyzed intelligence to the office of Dick Cheney the CIA has a rather unfortunate history. Today we can add the crime of kidnapping and torture to the tortured list of CIA infamies though really it is not that this is anything new or that people have not been aware of this nefarious pastime.
As we Americans get out an about everything looks normal, just another day in Leave it to Beaver land. Soccer moms driving junior to school in their gas guzzling recreation vehicles, pops going off to work, kids playing ball in the park, while our politicos scare us with tales of terrorists and mushroom clouds in order to get that all important nomination so that they can keep those kickbacks from weapon manufacturers flowing in to pad their pockets. But beneath all this humdrum normalcy that makes up American life a dark undercurrent of deceit and violence courses through our lives though it is not polite to speak of such unpleasantness, it might upset little Sally and give her nightmares.
So where to now America, home of the free, land of the brave. You are not so brave when it comes to fear of receiving what you have been dealing out to weaker nations for the past 100 years. Afraid of those terrorists? You bet, so torture is A-okay as long as it protects you from those bad people, those terrorists who hate you because of your freedom. Is this what America stands for, that shining citadel on the hill glowing in the sunny balm of God’s most beloved twixt sea and shining sea? That very same freedom you so casually tossed in the garbage can like so many wrappers left over from your favorite fast food chain is now just a thing of the past a victim of our rabid mouth foaming leaders who would stoop to any depravity to protect what we no longer can claim as our own.
Ah to be sure it is all the fault of Bush he as plays a mad tune on his fiddle while watching Rome burn to the ground. And congress -- that high institution of freedom -- what of our congress who have done NOTHING and continue to do NOTHING while telling us it is all part of some clever plan to stop our mad fiddling emperor by playing make-believe that they are actually challenging Bush’s signing papers or his flouting of the constitution that sacred document we used to hold so dear or any of the other mind boggling atrocities committed by a self-styled idiot king, and he is an idiot, just look at him, he looks like an idiot. As Groucho Marx once so astutely put it, “He looks like an idiot, and he talks like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you, he really is an idiot.”
But in all fairness why pick on just America when those noble people of Europe who have been so outraged by America’s penchant for murder, thievery, and mayhem are so culpable themselves. The article in BBC clearly states that Germany and Italy in particular have obstructed investigations into the CIA’s modern day Spanish Inquisitions while Romania and Poland have allowed secret CIA prisons to pursue their ghoulish enterprises within their sovereign borders and this is only those that we actually know about because who knows how many and where other of these grim tributes to man's inhumanity to man exist or have existed.
People often wonder what name shall be given to our era by historians of the future and perhaps to our shame it just might be something like the Second Dark Age.
From grossly exaggerating Russia’s nuclear weapons capability during the cold war, completely screwing up on the collapse of the Russian government as far as predicting it, to not speaking up on the stove-piping of unanalyzed intelligence to the office of Dick Cheney the CIA has a rather unfortunate history. Today we can add the crime of kidnapping and torture to the tortured list of CIA infamies though really it is not that this is anything new or that people have not been aware of this nefarious pastime.
As we Americans get out an about everything looks normal, just another day in Leave it to Beaver land. Soccer moms driving junior to school in their gas guzzling recreation vehicles, pops going off to work, kids playing ball in the park, while our politicos scare us with tales of terrorists and mushroom clouds in order to get that all important nomination so that they can keep those kickbacks from weapon manufacturers flowing in to pad their pockets. But beneath all this humdrum normalcy that makes up American life a dark undercurrent of deceit and violence courses through our lives though it is not polite to speak of such unpleasantness, it might upset little Sally and give her nightmares.
So where to now America, home of the free, land of the brave. You are not so brave when it comes to fear of receiving what you have been dealing out to weaker nations for the past 100 years. Afraid of those terrorists? You bet, so torture is A-okay as long as it protects you from those bad people, those terrorists who hate you because of your freedom. Is this what America stands for, that shining citadel on the hill glowing in the sunny balm of God’s most beloved twixt sea and shining sea? That very same freedom you so casually tossed in the garbage can like so many wrappers left over from your favorite fast food chain is now just a thing of the past a victim of our rabid mouth foaming leaders who would stoop to any depravity to protect what we no longer can claim as our own.
Ah to be sure it is all the fault of Bush he as plays a mad tune on his fiddle while watching Rome burn to the ground. And congress -- that high institution of freedom -- what of our congress who have done NOTHING and continue to do NOTHING while telling us it is all part of some clever plan to stop our mad fiddling emperor by playing make-believe that they are actually challenging Bush’s signing papers or his flouting of the constitution that sacred document we used to hold so dear or any of the other mind boggling atrocities committed by a self-styled idiot king, and he is an idiot, just look at him, he looks like an idiot. As Groucho Marx once so astutely put it, “He looks like an idiot, and he talks like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you, he really is an idiot.”
But in all fairness why pick on just America when those noble people of Europe who have been so outraged by America’s penchant for murder, thievery, and mayhem are so culpable themselves. The article in BBC clearly states that Germany and Italy in particular have obstructed investigations into the CIA’s modern day Spanish Inquisitions while Romania and Poland have allowed secret CIA prisons to pursue their ghoulish enterprises within their sovereign borders and this is only those that we actually know about because who knows how many and where other of these grim tributes to man's inhumanity to man exist or have existed.
People often wonder what name shall be given to our era by historians of the future and perhaps to our shame it just might be something like the Second Dark Age.
posted by Unknown at 8:27 AM
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